CHAPTER III. 



ON THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH IN ENGLAND 

 FROM 1583 TO 1702. 



DURING the last twenty years of Elizabeth's reign, full as it 

 was of stirring incidents, and marked as it was by occasional 

 political activity, little change was made in the distribution of 

 wealth. High prices and low rents, enforced economy, and 

 austere habits of life helped to develope that peculiar type of 

 Englishman who gave so marked a character to the age 

 which was at hand, and effected the consolidation of the 

 Puritan party and that spirit of resistance to Government 

 which, after a forty years' struggle in and out of Parliament 

 and the extinction of every hope of an amicable settlement, 

 drove the people into civil war. James never enjoyed the 

 respect of his subjects for a day, Charles never gained their 

 confidence for an hour. 



During the course of the War of Dutch Independence, and 

 as the Flemish or obedient provinces were being subdued, 

 ruined, and harried by the Spanish Inquisition, numbers of 

 Flemish artisans and capitalists emigrated to England. To- 

 wards the end of my period, a similar colonisation of perse- 

 cuted Huguenots was effected, and in each case political and 

 polemical sympathies were enlisted on the side of the new- 

 comers. Now it had long been an object of anxiety with 

 English statesmen to develope woollen manufactures in the 

 country, and to get the benefit of a textile industry as well as 

 of an agricultural product, in which, as I have often said, 

 England had for centuries a monopoly. During the times of 



